A
RISING
DARKNESS
Book 1
of
The Hand of Justice
Nikki Dorakis
AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: 1-800-839-8640
© 2012 by Nikki Dorakis. All rights reserved.
Cover Design : © Nikki Dorakis using Serif Page Plus X5 ™
The right of Nikki Dorakis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This work may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the permission of the Author/Publisher.
Permission can be obtained through contact via e-mail: [email protected]
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
Published by AuthorHouse 05/31/2012
ISBN: 978-1-4685-8321-2 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4685-8320-5 (e)
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Contents
About the Author
About the Story
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1 In the Chill of the Night
Chapter 2 The Body Breakers
Chapter 3 A Debt Repaid
Chapter 4 Hunter or Hunted?
Chapter 5 Legacy
Chapter 6 The White Guard
Chapter 7 The First Rule
Chapter 8 In the Company of Wolves
Chapter 9 Assassin
Chapter 10 Vision
Chapter 11 Thinker
Chapter 12 Morlans
Chapter 13 Alliance
Chapter 14 A Matter of Honour
Chapter 15 Sins Past and Present
Chapter 16 Rising Darkness
Chapter 17 Dissent
Chapter 18 Taken
Chapter 19 The Cage
Chapter 20 Advances
Chapter 21 Old Debts—New Paths
Chapter 22 Cursed
Chapter 23 Treaty Complete
Chapter 24 Error & Trial
Chapter 25 Death in the Wings
Chapter 26 A Dark Pact
Chapter 27 The Eye of Zoar
Chapter 28 Illios
Chapter 29 The Dark Pact Invoked
Chapter 30 Sneak Attack
Chapter 31 An Ancestor’s Madness
Chapter 32 Beautiful and dark—and deadly
Chapter 33 A Sacrifice to Justice
Chapter 34 Vengeance is Mine
Chapter 35 Priest to King 4—Pinned
Chapter 36 Wizard to Priest—Executed
Chapter 37 King to Priest—Executed
Chapter 38 Touched by The God
Chapter 39 Serpent
Chapter 40 Siege
Chapter 41 Medravia
Chapter 42 The Magister
Chapter 43 Comes The Reaver
Chapter 44 Now to the Flames
Chapter 45 The Darkest Hours
Chapter 46 New Light
MORLA
ZETARIA
About the Author
About the Story
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nikki Dorakis has been writing for a number of years. His work as a psychiatric nurse has always taken precedence until at the ripe old age of fifty-five, he decided to retire and go part-time so that he could work on his books.
Nikki is a Pagan priest and an ordained minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanism.
He writes for his own pleasure and now wants to share that pleasure with you. He hope this brings you as much enjoyment in the reading of it as it gave him in the writing of it.
ABOUT THE STORY
When I first wrote A Rising Darkness it was called The Eye of Zoar. “The Eye” was originally intended to refer to the magical name for Meriq’s skill.
The original manuscript, together with the storage discs were lost during my move from Saudi Arabia back to England and it has taken me sometime to re-write it . . .
I have deliberately avoided the use of words like ‘telepathy’ and ‘telekinesis’ as these our “our words” and have no place in Zetaria. I have called candles ‘lightsticks’ and made other changes for the same reasons—to try to create sense of a culture alien to our own.
The characters use their own language to express certain things and though I have tried to keep the use of Morlan and Zetarian to the minimum; nothing is more frustrating than having to try to figure out what the protagonists are talking about. The characters are not always that co-operative, however, and do lapse into their own tongues very briefly when they are angry or if the ‘Common Tongue’ fails them. There are lexicons at the end of the book but these are simply included for those readers who might be interested.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to Michael Shell for the hours you spent with me being read at!
Thanks also to all those who believed in the stories.
And Special Thanks
to
The Staff of Costa, Waterstones,
Portsmouth:
Zoe, Kayleigh, Jade, Mikki,
Connor, David, George, Mike
and
Ninja Josh
For keeping the coffee coming!
PROLOGUE
I was six cycles old when I was taken. The soldiers came with ugly gaping mouths that screamed and yelled and drooled. They raped and murdered my father, my mother, my older brother and my sister. I was taken and given as a gift to the Crown Prince of Zetaria a monstrous, twisted man of strange tastes and some persuasions.
But for the King’s Vizier, Anubis I would have been destined for a life of misery and depravity until the Prince tired of me. Anubis seized me from the Crown Prince’s clutches before the man could so much as breathe on me, claiming me as tribute for an enchantment worked in battle.
The old mage raised me as the son he would never have. On that day my life changed forever.
CHAPTER 1
IN THE CHILL OF THE NIGHT
THE LIGHTS of the Council Chamber had been burning constantly for the past five nights. I stared up at the citadel and sighed heavily. King Janir never held council for so long—he hated protracted meetings with his counsellors and frequently curtailed them when he was unable to avoid them. The current gathering was unprecedented and it worried me. It seemed to be worrying the citizens as well; the generally bustling, busy city was oddly mute. The discussions, whatever they were, were taking a heavy toll on everyone, especially the king’s advisors if the careworn expressions of the counsellors were anything to go by. Even Anubis, my mentor and protector, had never seemed to feel his ninety cycles as much as he did at the moment.
I stared again at the great red-walled fortress that had been my home for the last eight cycles shifting slightly into a more comfortable position on the window cill. The fortress rose like a great dragon from the spine of the strange, tiered outcrop of granite thrusting itself upwards on great, clawed buttresses as if the very earth was giving it birth. The copper, gold and silver roof tiles glittered like scales under the light of the twin moons adding detail to the dragon imagery my mind conjur
ed for me. Slowly my eyes traced the line of the roof ridge coming to rest once more on the white marble walls of the royal apartments and the glowing gold-capped ivory tusk of the of the council tower.
Below the fortress the city of Kalina spilled down the side of the hill, the scattered lights from houses and shops burning like tiny embers—remnants of a forest laid waste in the holocaust of the dragon’s breath. I turned my attention briefly to the twin moons. They hung high and full as carnival lanterns against the curtain of the night. I groaned. It was almost midnight. The moons would soon reach their zenith; day would be upon us before we knew it and I still had studies to complete.
Drawing my cloak more tightly around my shoulders I began to pick my way down the twisting stair of the small scout tower. Closing the stout iron-studded redwood door I began the rather hazardous descent down the track of the motte.
The hill was a man-made affair, designed to give a good view of the plains and, of course, advance warning of any attempts at sneak attacks from the forested areas to the southwest. Zetaria had been at peace with its neighbours for just over eight cycles—just after the day I was taken as a war-prize in fact—and in time the tower became obsolete. I adopted the edifice as my aerie shortly after my fourteenth birthday and managed to persuade Anubis to permit me to use some of my allowance to maintain the structure. Eventually he agreed. I spent much of my free time in the little tower, enjoying the solitude as much as the regular visits from the wild creatures that frequented the area.
The Zetans living in the city, like people everywhere, were not slow to note my habit and the hill was dubbed Dhar-Kyr-Sini—the little wizard’s house. And once so-called the locals, being superstitious in such matters, kept away from the hill and its adjacent forest and meadow land. On my fifteenth birthday King Janir made me a gift of the hill, its tower and lands, including the forest—as much, he said, so that I would stop plaguing Anubis for advances on my allowance that I might carry out some “essential maintenance”, as from recognition of my intense affection for the place. And, he added with a smile, there was the talk of wizardry; he would not want a wizard as his enemy.
I found myself smiling at the memory and once more counted my blessings thanking the great god Zoar that, in sparing me from the holocaust that enveloped Mederlana destroying my hometown and all of my family, He had placed me so well in the aftermath. Though the loss of my home and family was a dire blow to me, I had still fared better than most of the boys of my village. A great many were taken by Zetan soldiers seeking exotic barrack companions; our raven hair, violet eyes and pale skins were much prized by the fair-haired, bronzed invaders. And such might have been my fate except that I was unfortunate enough to fall into the clutches of Crown Prince Balten—a beast of a man with many strange tastes and persuasions. Others had been taken and sold into brothels and yet others had simply been slain when their captors tired of them.
To his credit King Janir had those men executed as soon as the news reached his ears. As for me, Anubis took me from Prince Balten’s tent before the man had so much as breathed on me, firstly as a means of protecting the Crown Prince from his father’s rough justice, and when the Prince drew his sword and challenged the old man, Anubis took me as tribute for an enchantment rendered earlier in the battle. Balten backed down then, as much out of concern that he might find himself either on the end of Anubis’ curse or his own father’s sword. Clearly he did not know which to fear most.
Anubis took me into his home and raised me as the son he would never have. He taught me the skills of reading, writing and numbers, and when I was ten he began to teach me magic. It was during one of my lessons, when he asked me to fetch him an ancient grimoire that we discovered my ability to move objects with the power of thought alone. It was an accidental discovery. The book had been far too heavy for me to lift because I was a slim, slight, wiry child and after several minutes of trying get the book off the table I grew frustrated and went to shove the book. My hands never connected. The book flew off the table, travelled clear across the room and knocked Anubis off his feet as he came over to help me. From that point Anubis concentrated on this skill, honing and polishing it above all others until it was so acutely focussed I could pluck a single hair from the head of a sleeping man without disturbing him or split a rock with glance. And not only did the old sage hone the skill he kept it hidden from everyone—even the King—and counselled me to do the same.
“People fear your kind of magic much more than they do the obvious magics of conjuration and sorcery, spells and the like. But one day, little dragon—one day it will serve you well,” Anubis said threading my blue-black hair fondly through his fingers, “And one day it will serve the king.”
My musing was interrupted by the sudden transition from the sloping path of the motte to the rough screed of the road leading back to the city. As I reached the level ground I turned and saluted the hill and the small, stone scout tower as I always did and then turned my steps once more towards Kalina. I moved swiftly, suddenly aware of the night’s chill and eager to reach the shelter of the main city.
As I walked I became acutely aware of the crunch of the gravel under my boots, my steps sounded unnaturally even and loud. I broke my step and began to trot, but the even thud, thud, thud persisted, growing until it sounded like the noise of a thousand soldiers marching. I stopped. The noise did not. Ahead of me Kalina’s fortress seemed to writhe and twist and the great dragon that I had imagined earlier lifted its head and tore itself free from the earth. With one toss of its huge head it shattered the upper curtain wall scattering fragments of rock into the sky then breathed a shaft of fire so huge it engulfed the entire southern city. I threw myself flat, covering my head as shards of stone began raining from the air and the great wall of flame engulfed me. The roar of the flames filled my head, drowning out the sound of marching. Then, as suddenly as the vision started, it ended and all was still. The night was just the night again and the roar of flame was only the sound of the night wind in the distant trees. I clambered to my feet feeling oddly disconnected from my body—as if something had pushed my soul aside for those few moments and left a void when it withdrew. Brushing the dust from my chiton I resumed my course towards the city at a good steady run.
I reached the main outer gate moments later returning the guard’s greeting somewhat more tersely than I intended and picked my way up through the narrow, winding streets. Pausing briefly in a small square halfway to the castle I straightened my clothing properly, brushing the last of the dust from the hem of my tunic and my legs. Across the square a man left one of the many city taverns making his unsteady way to a narrow alley. Voices clattered into the night like a rock fall and were muted almost at once to a low rumble as the tavern door swung shut with a sharp “clack”. The sudden sounds of normality did much to settle me, and when I resumed my course homewards I did so at a more sedately determined pace. By the time I reached the moat bridge I had caught my breath properly and felt more like myself.
Making a brief sign against water demons I headed into the castle.
As I emerged from the darkness of the portal a sentry jumped forward his spear levelled at the ready.
“Hold! Be you friend, spy . . . or wizard?”
“Assassin,” I growled as I recovered my composure. “Faedron you fool, you scared me half to death. Don’t ever jump out on me like that again.”
The young corporal beamed at me, tossed his spear to the relief guard and fell in beside me as I headed across the concourse. “You are late abroad tonight, young sir,” the soldier stated casually taking my hand. “And chilled.”
“I know,” I answered ruefully as I pulled my light summer cloak tighter around my shoulders. “It was much warmer earlier. I lost track of the time.”
“Ahhh!” Faedron nodded sagely, “And what wondrous spells have you been casting up on Dhar-Kyr-Sini?”
“None. I was just thinking.” I paused as we neared the barracks. “I shall be glad to get in to
night.”
Faedron nodded. “As will I. The night’s chill is harsh tonight.”
As I went to reply the young man grabbed me, scooping me up in his arms as if I was little more than a doll. “Come with me then, fair fey. And with the magic of your smile warm us all.”
A Rising Darkness Page 1